Its difficult to see how minimum pricing will effect that though. Most of the cost of booze is already duty anyway. and that doesn't seem to have any noticable effect on the Saturday night town centre carnage.

Which would suggest that this wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to the things that generate policing, NHS and social care costs.

If only someone from a university (or perhaps a whole bunch of people from a bunch of different universities) had done a bunch of studies on pricing of alcohol and its effect on heavy drinking behaviour, then we would have some idea of whether this was true, and wouldn't have to rely on what we've seen from the Saturday night town centre carnage. That would be great wouldn't it?

Seriously, if pricing didn't have an effect on alcohol consumption, there wouldn't be any difference between the number of fights / number of people puking up outside Yates Wine Lodge or dodgy bars with 'triples for singles' promotions than there are outside all the fancy wine bars, and there blatantly is a big difference.

You're right about culture though. And changing culture is really difficult. Between the recession and the indoor smoking ban though, weekend nights in town look very different from how they were a few years ago.

More interestingly perhaps, there seems to be an upswing in people going out for a couple of sociable drinks midweek, playing pool, taking part in quizzes and so on. I don't really see this as a bad thing, we're (re?)establishing pubs as places to have a chat with your mates rather than somewhere to try and hit double figures with pints of strong lager as quickly as possible.

If there were a method of reducing alcohol consumption should we as a nation give it a go?

just drink less its that simple. I would like the min price to rise. i would also like the extra cash to go straight to the nhs and police! The amount binge drinkers cost this country is amazing when you take into consideration both short term and long term costs.

Alcohol is capable of causing so much destruction. i dont understand how it is legal and less harmful and troublesome substances and illegal. I mean when was the last time u saw a group of young men fighting in the street after a spliff? how many A&E visitors turn up due to cannabis related incidents?

Except it's not, is it. If it was, we wouldn't need massive support networks and replacement therapies for people trying to quit cigarettes or heroin; we could just go "you know that thing you do where you put something in your mouth and set fire to it? Don't do that."

One of alcohol's qualities is that it lowers inhibitions. Speaking from bitter experience, it's very easy to go "oh, I'll just have one" and end up trousered a few hours later because your mates are drinking and the couple you've already had meant your self control has gone out of the window.

i dont understand how it is legal

Because history has proved just how successful prohibition isn't.

You ban alcohol, you don't get rid of it, you just drive it underground. And that's really dangerous. People will import it illegally, or manufacture their own. The government won't particularly want a huge upsurge in non-taxed alcohol with no quality controls. And you really don't want people making home stills.

You ban alcohol, you don't get rid of it, you just drive it underground. And that's really dangerous. People will import it illegally, or manufacture their own. The government won't particularly want a huge upsurge in non-taxed alcohol with no quality controls. And you really don't want people making home stills.

and yet they don't have a problem with the drugs "industry" doing just that.

Well ok they do have a problem with it, but they know aswell as we do that prohibition is useless and yet they continue with their doomed strategy of sticking their head in the sand.

There is an argument for decriminalising drugs and allowing Smack R Us stores to pop up on the high street. I think there's (at least) two issues with this.

Firstly, that sort of paradigm shift would be incredibly hard to implement, and I suspect widely unpopular. I can't imagine many people not having an opinion on it.

Secondly, making it legal sort of gives it a seal of approval, it makes it normal and 'safe'. Whilst the dangers of alcohol are well reported, I'd hazard that the problem drinkers - the alcoholics and the ones who think a good night is twelve pints of Stella and a glassing - are actually a minority. Compare and contrast, say, heroin. Is there such a thing as a casual heroin user? Can you see people having a lunchtime wrap with their meal of a Tuesday lunchtime?

For me personally, I've never touched any 'hard' drugs. Part of that is probably down to successful campaigning - I grew up in the 80s, so I know that Zammo chased the dragon and got a smack on the nose, and also learned the life skill of how to put a condom onto a banana - but I think a big part of it is that my brain perhaps recklessly connects "it's legal, it must be relatively safe / it's illegal, it must be really dangerous." As such, I was drinking in my mid-to-late teens but had absolutely no desire to find out what that cocaine stuff was all about. (As an adult I've subsequently learned that coke is basically instant tedious arsehole mix, so I didn't miss much it seems.)

I can't say for sure, but if harder drugs had been normalized when I was young I perhaps would have had a different attitude to them. And certainly they'd have been easier to obtain, my exposure to drugs and users is relatively tiny; I don't think I even saw cannabis first-hand until I was at university.

Careful what you wish for - what other 'activities' can we ban, MTBing?

That costs the NHS.

Yes it does. last time i was in A+E was on a friday night because i dislocated my shoulder. funnily enough the cyclist to piss head ratio was not as high as you would expect. believe it or not i was the only cycling related injury however there was a strong smell of alcohol and MOST of the other patients did not exactly look or act sober.

They've caved in to drinks industry lobbyists and put £ before protecting society

while i have no doubt this is correct, can someone explain it further.

i imagine that there would be slightly reduced volume of sales, but with a higher profit margin - the production costs etc would not be changed - Does the 'industry' think that these will not net off against each other, or is there something more that Im missing?

i have no belief in the "protecting middle england" story being peddled by mps. Middle england is well represented right here and the majority are in favour of min pricing.

Firstly, that sort of paradigm shift would be incredibly hard to implement, and I suspect widely unpopular. I can't imagine many people not having an opinion on it.

Pretty true.
People have grown up being told "drugs are bad (m'kay)".
It's hard to shift opinion. And people don't like to feel their world view has been based on lies misinformed.
The exact same argument could be used against implementing an alcohol prohibition. The public just wouldn't accept it. Too many have grown up with adverts of pretty girls and sunny holidays associated with booze that there's just no way that it could be bad for you.

However, the reality is that it's not a case of "drugs and alcohol".
Alcohol is a drug. It's as druggy as all the rest. Not the most addictive, or the most damaging to health, but on that scale it's certainly more addictive and damaging than a lot that are illegal. If it was a new discovery, it definitely wouldn't be legalised.
But that's not the situation we're in. So it's legal. So it's "OK".

The thing is, cigarettes used to be viewed in the same way as alcohol. But that public perception has been changed. It wasn't a "paradigm shift", it was a long slow process. Small steps, since the eighties. With younger generations being more and more aware of the dangers than their predecessors, and smoking becoming less and less popular. There's been a lot of opposition too, from hardened smokers addicts, and the cigarette industry dealers but the nation's health has been improve and some would say that means times have changed for the better.
This minimum pricing wouldn't have been a paradigm shift, but it would have been a small step in the right direction.

Yes it does. last time i was in A+E was on a friday night because i dislocated my shoulder. funnily enough the cyclist to piss head ratio was not as high as you would expect. believe it or not i was the only cycling related injury however there was a strong smell of alcohol and MOST of the other patients did not exactly look or act sober.

Last time I was in A&E - waiting to get my faced stitched up after an OTB incident - was a Saturday, early afternoon. There was a sorry procession of 'blokes who should know better'. All signalling the nature of their injuries by what they were wearing. Cycling gear, football strips, rugby kits. All of us muddy, bloody and looking sheepish. From what i could ascertain, nobody was pissed

Homosexuality used to be illegal. When it was decriminalised, did everyone think "I reckon I'll give that bumming a go, now its got the official thumbs up"

I know as soon as the vote was passed in the commons and it got written into UK law, I took that to mean it was actively encouraged by the democratically elected members of parliament, so went straight down the local HGV cafe and got me some diesel, tobacco and bacon scented action.

I have just had 10 days in Norway.
About 76 NOK for a point, or £9.
I did not have many of those, but we did drink our duty free allowance.
Even with the high tax, and tight controls ( wine and spirits can only be bought from government owned monopoly of shops )Norway still has its fair share of drink problems.

similar to sweden then, most small towns are completely dry and dead after 6. I like sweden and the swedes but it is pretty grim of an evening working out in the sticks on your own.

Whilst the immediate conclusion is that it would result in less harm to health, the studies have failed to account for reactive behaviour by problem drinkers.

The only people this would effect significantly would be problem drinkers, and if you price them out of legitimately sourced alcohol, then what you're doing is forcing them into the arms of the bootleggers and criminals who are already running illegal stills and selling industrial solvents on a horrific scale.

the health implications of an expansion in black market booze dwarves the likely benefits.

Yes IHN, thats ok on the surface of it. But in the same way as smokers cark it quite quickly, without requiring too much long term attention, after paying absolutely stonking great big amounts of tax, then surely everyone doing a George Best would save on the cost of long term care, pensions, Werthers originals, free bus passes, Tenalady pads, and treatment for going bonkers, and your legs stopping working.

Rather than vilifying piss-heads, smokers and smackheads, Maybe a touch of gratitude may be in order from the health nazi contingent, as they settle into being a burden on society until they're 112 while waiting for their 4th hip replacement

I was really meaning 'instant' in the context of instant soup or instant coffee, rather than making a damning social comment about the speed of its effects. But it's an interesting point.

Alcohol does seem to send different people different ways. Some people get giggly, or sleepy. Some people get nasty or violent. But it's not everyone; I can categorically state that I've never gone out for a few beers and a fight, and would go out of my way to avoid those who clearly have.

Yes IHN, thats ok on the surface of it. But in the same way as smokers cark it quite quickly, without requiring too much long term attention, after paying absolutely stonking great big amounts of tax, then surely everyone doing a George Best would save on the cost of long term care, pensions, Werthers originals, free bus passes, Tenalady pads, and treatment for going bonkers, and your legs stopping working.

Rather than vilifying piss-heads, smokers and smackheads, Maybe a touch of gratitude may be in order from the health nazi contingent, as they settle into being a burden on society until they're 112 while waiting for their 4th hip replacement

The beauty of this argument is that, whilst it's obviously total bollocks, I'll be buggered if I can explain why

The amount binge drinkers cost this country is amazing when you take into consideration both short term and long term costs.

Of course the Town centre police, Renal nurses and landlords are all good taxpayers and would be quite happy to keep their jobs - the money doesn't evaporate. Drinking coffee is more detrimental to the government coffers than drinking beer.

So the prefect solution to this is to develop a national moral obligation in these austere times? To (continue, as a nation to) binge drink...in pubs....thus paying tax? Even Wetherspoons? In fact... preferably Wetherspoons? But try not to get into too may fights? Well... not ones that require hospitalisation? Then pass away quietly in your sleep of liver failure - or get beaten to death in a brawl! Prior to retirement?